Bbbbbrrrrrrr… It’s like winter out there! But things are cookin’ in here. Lots of good stuff in again this week, and many great things en route as well. Hopefully it slows down a bit so we can take a second to breathe! As I’m sure you know, next Friday is Black Friday, and there’s special Record Store Day releases! Those are starting to trickle in, most in next week though. You can check our RSD page for details…HERE
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…..picks of the week…..
Flaming Tunes: s/t (Superior Viaduct) LP
Flaming Tunes’ sole release is perhaps the finest elegy to the ‘80s home recording ethos that you’ve never heard. Originally released in 1985 on cassette (with individually hand-colored covers), this self-titled album grew out of the collaboration between childhood friends Gareth Williams and Mary Currie. Williams is best known as a member of English art-rock band This Heat. After leaving the group in the early ’80s, he travelled to India where he studied classical Kathakali dance—an experience that would profoundly shape the music of Flaming Tunes. In an old Victorian house in South London, the duo recorded during the day while Currie’s young son attended school and Williams conducted tape treatments at night. They were joined by various guests including This Heat guitarist Charles Bullen as well as long-term collaborators Martin Harrison and Rick Wilson. Using whatever instruments they had on hand (clarinet, piano, bells, etc.), Flaming Tunes create lo-fi melodies around simple arrangements, oblique rhythms and densely layered natural sounds. The results are a mesmeric collage of instrumental daydreams and sideways pop songs, floating into one another in a hazy confluence of late ’60s Canterbury psych-folk and early Residents experimentation. All of these beguiling elements converge in a personal manner, quietly insistent in listeners’ ears like the blood pulsing in one’s veins on a warm summer day.
File Under: Lofi, Art Rock, This Heat, Essential Grooves
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Brian Eno: Film Music 1976-2020 (Universal) LP
The long awaited Film Music 1976-2020 brings together 17 tracks from Brian Eno’s most recognizable film and television work spanning five decades. Eno’s music has been used in hundreds of films and he has composed more than 20 soundtracks for some of the best known directors in the world including David Lynch, Danny Boyle, Peter Jackson, Michelangelo Antonioni, Derek Jarman and Michael Mann. Compositions such as “Ship in a Bottle” from The Lovely Bones, “Prophecy Theme” from Dune, “Deep Blue Day” from Trainspotting, “Late Evening in Jersey” from Heat, “Beach Sequence” from Michelangelo Antonioni’s last film Beyond The Clouds and “An Ending (Ascent)” from Al Reinert’s ground-breaking For All Mankind have contributed significantly to memorably iconic scenes. Eno has also scored extensively for television, including all three series of the gritty UK crime drama, Top Boy for which he received a Bafta, and Danny Boyle’s Mr Wroe’s Virgins which earned him and his brother Roger a Bafta nomination. Film Music 1976-2020 features over an hour of classic Brian Eno compositions and includes several previously unreleased tracks.
File Under: Ambient, OST, PROPHECY THEME!!!
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…..new arrivals…..
Olafur Arnalds: Some Kind of Peace
(Mercury) LP
Icelandic multi-instrumentalist and composer Ólafur Arnalds releases the new album, Some Kind Of Peace, inspired by a conversation he had with a close friend. “He started talking about how we can’t control anything that happens to us,” Ólafur recalled. “All we can do is control how we react to what life gives us. That just totally clicked; to me the music symbolises that reaction. It was one of those moments where suddenly everything you’re doing makes sense.” All the collaborators on the album were key to Ólafur’s life during the making of the album, including British musician Bonobo, Icelandic singer and multi-instrumentalist JFDR, and his friend Josin, a German singer-songwriter. Some Kind Of Peace is a personal journey told through Arnalds’ introspective music, against the backdrop of a chaotic world. Ólafur explains, “This album is about what it means to be alive, daring to be vulnerable and the importance of rituals…set against a background of a world thrown into chaos. I’ve poured all my love, dreams and fears into this album through a magical but difficult process, but the result is something that makes me immensely proud and happy to be doing what I do.” Arnalds weaves real-world pieces of his life story throughout Some Kind Of Peace revealing his most personal record to date. “It’s so personal that I’m still trying to find the words to talk about it,” he said with a smile. “I felt it was important that the album would tell my story in a very honest way. This album is much closer to my heart than any of the others.” Throughout the recording Ólafur urges you to accept all that life throws at you, to contemplate, and to choose how you react, to find your kind of peace.
File Under: Electronic, Ambient, Classical
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Boris: Amplifier Worship (Third Man) LP
Formed in 1992, Boris boldly explores their own vision of heavy music, where words like “explosive” and “thunderous” barely do justice. Using overpowering soundscapes embellished with copious amounts of lighting and billow smoke, Boris has shared with audiences across the planet an experience for all five senses in their concerts, earning legions of zealous fans along the way. First released in 1998, catalog staple Amplifier Worship will see its first-ever reissue with minimalistic album art from the first-press Japanese CD in November 2020 via Third Man Records. The Stoughton gatefold jacket will house both officially remastered LPs, pressed at Third Man Pressing. Amplifier Worship is Boris’ most intense and unrelenting album to date. Not for the faint of heart, the group incorporates mythic doom-drones, up-tempo psych-sludge and even a refreshing ribbit into their signature concoction of celestial and heavy music. Amplifier Worship is a critical chapter in the Boris canon. The album is a testament to the group’s bullishness in pushing metal to it’s uncomfortable and unfamiliar edges. And it’s also undoubtedly one of their best.
File Under: Metal, Drone
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Boris: Absolutego (Third Man) LP
Formed in 1992, Boris boldly explores their own vision of heavy music, where words like “explosive” and “thunderous” barely do justice. Using overpowering soundscapes embellished with copious amounts of lighting and billow smoke, Boris has shared with audiences across the planet an experience for all five senses in their concerts, earning legions of zealous fans along the way. Originally released in 1996, Boris’ 60-minute 13-second debut “single” Absolutego will see an officially remastered reissue out in November 2020 on Third Man Records. This reissue will include the original album art and full “one long song” spread across one and a half LPs, with 1997 recording “Dronevil 2” filling out side D of the second LP, all fitting in a neatly packaged single-pocket LP jacket pressed at Third Man Pressing. This will also serve as Absolutego’s long-awaited debut across digital streaming services. Absolutego is a trek over a staggering mountain of sound. The tension builds with wave after wave of massive feedback, drums leading into a crushing crescendo of full-band repetition and clarity before descending deeper until finally reaching a surreal divebomb purring drone finale. This song takes notes out of the Melvins playbook and pushes the sound to its absolute logical and visceral extreme. It sets a solid foundation for why Boris is considered to be one of the most important metal bands of the 21st century.
File Under: Metal, Drone
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British Sea Power: Open Season (Rough Trade) LP
On the 15th anniversary of its original release, Rough Trade Records reissues British Sea Power’s majestic second album, Open Season. The expanded reissue (gatefold colored vinyl + zoetrope picture disc) includes additional live sessions, B-sides and rarities from the period plus extensive new sleeve notes. The majority of the original album was recorded by Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized, Primal Scream, Girls Aloud) and mixed by Bill Price (Sex Pistols, The Clash, Sparks). Two tracks were recorded and mixed by Graham Sutton (The Delays, Bark Psychosis) and Phill Brown (Sly Stone, Led Zeppelin, Talk Talk). Open Season is virtually a 45-minute waltz of lilting string arrangements and dreamy vocals while acoustic and electric guitars chase the album’s quiet golden tones. Yan Scott Wilkinson’s literate, richly descriptive words paint a gallery of pictures in each song, and the ensemble’s penchant for pitch-perfect songcraft keeps things fresh and engaging.
File Under: Indie Rock
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Cabaret Voltaire: Shadow of Fear
(Mute) LP
Shadow Of Fear is Cabaret Voltaire’s first release with Richard H Kirk as the sole member of the band and the result is an album that defies categorization. The tone and personality of Cabaret Voltaire is ingrained into its core as it dances across techno, dub, house, 1970s Kosmische, and general esoteric explorations coupled with mangled vocal samples. It’s a voyage through the history of electronic music that arrives at a new destination. Cabaret Voltaire has always been a group ahead of their time, even prescient at times, and this album carries on that evolution. “The album was finished just as all the weirdness was starting to kick in,” Kirk says. “Shadow Of Fear feels like a strangely appropriate title. The current situation didn’t have much of an influence on what I was doing – all the vocal content was already in place before the panic set in – but maybe due to my nature of being a bit paranoid there are hints in there about stuff going a bit weird and capturing the current state of affairs.” Although, as with a lot of Kirk’s work, concrete meaning and narrative is ripe for interpretation rather than being spelled out. “Surrealism has always been really important to Cabaret Voltaire,” Kirk notes. “And that’s still present too.” The genesis of the new album was the 2014 Berlin Atonal festival where Kirk played the first show on his own as Cabaret Voltaire. This began a new era for the pioneering Sheffield outfit whose influence across electronic, post-punk and industrial music remains an untouchable one today. Kirk explains “The mission statement from the off was no nostalgia. Normal rules do not apply. Something for the 21st Century. No old material.”Recorded at the latest location of Western Works, the studio used throughout Cabaret Voltaire’s history, Kirk toyed with upgrading his old set up to digital but after a computer failure he decided to retain his original equipment. “Making this album reminded me a bit of the old days with Cabaret Voltaire because there wasn’t that much equipment, so you really had to use your imagination.” That’s as far as the comparisons to olden days Cabaret Voltaire go. This is new music for a new era. “It’s nice that people appreciate what you’ve done in the past,” adds Kirk. “But it’s a dangerous place to dwell.”
File Under: Electronic
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Barry Cleveland: Stones of Precious Water (Morning Trip) LP
The title of guitarist BARRY CLEVELAND’s 1986 album—Stones of Precious Water—conjures images of incandescent gems, harvested from hallowed streams and held aloft to glimmer and catch the light in their many facets. And perhaps this is the truest analogue for the music contained therein. Recorded between 1981 and 1983, in mostly improvised recording sessions, the disparate nature of Stones’ creation is alluded to only by the breadth and variety of sounds it encompasses. Stones of Precious Water is a revelatory collection that maps its way through textural fourth-world ambience, shimmering New Age, gently propulsive kosmiche, and jazz-inflected prog. These sounds are sewn together with a deftness of performance and sonic character which reveals them as branches of the same tree, or perhaps more appropriately, a handful of glittering stones. Six of the ten tracks contain contributions from KAT EPPLE and her late husband BOB STOHL (aka the epoch-defining New Age duo, EMERALD WEB), adding flute, synthesizers, and bells. Between the years of 1981 and 1983, Cleveland worked with this duo and alone, allowing serendipity to play a significant creative role in their music. Many of the pieces began as improvisations, or simple structures that served as springboards for deeper exploration. Making his first forays into multi-track recording, Cleveland used a basic Teac 4-track cassette recorder, and this rudimentary piece of equipment proved to be a useful tool for compositional exploration. By flipping and reversing the tape, slowing the pitch, and altering and layering different performances, Cleveland stretched the sound of his guitar across the expanse of the tonal canvas. Stones of Precious Water stands as a remarkable document of experimental selfrecording, improvisational collaboration, and restless creative expression. Morning Trip is exceedingly happy to release it on Vinyl LP for the first time.
File Under: Ambient, New Age
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Coldplay: Parachutes (Parlophone) LP
Yellow vinyl version! Coldplay’s shimmering 2000 debut is a dark and melodic masterpiece that swells with pure emotion and showcases the group’s boundless warmth and flair for moodily dramatic pop craftsmanship. Co-produced with Ken Nelson, the Grammy and Brit Award-winning effort’s pristine, heartfelt songs stand up gracefully alone but gain even greater breadth in the context of the full album. Home to the irresistible hit singles “Shiver,” “Yellow,” “Trouble” and “Don’t Panic,” it’s as fully formed a debut as they come, a multi-platinum collection of remarkable depth and beauty and a fine introduction to a band that has since gone on to become one of the biggest pop acts in the world. Celebrating 20 years since its original release, Parlophone marks the milestone with a colored 180g vinyl LP reissue!
File Under: Rock, Pop
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Wendy Eisenberg: Auto (Ba Da Bing) LP
Drawing the connections between Wendy Eisenberg’s releases feels like undertaking a wide-ranging investigation. Albums of wildly inventive guitar, tempo-shifting avant rock and curiously leftfield pop fit together as offerings of Eisenberg’s curious mind. On Auto, their most innovative and inner-reaching album yet, Eisenberg explores emotional, subjective truth, and how it interacts with an objectivity no person alone can grasp. Inspired by the solo work of Mark Hollis (Talk Talk) and David Sylvian’s Blemish, with playing skills that have already seen them climbing Best Guitarist lists and an unvarnished vocal immediacy, Wendy Eisenberg has created an album of subtle display that resonates with maximal impact. Auto has multiple meanings. First, automobile: “A lot of these songs were written about and mentally take place when I’m in the car on my way to gigs,“ says Eisenberg. Immediate melodies came to them on these trips, to which they’d later add complex guitar parts. And automata: “I make myself into a machine, which is why everything that’s played is precise.” Finally, they frame their work in the literary technique of auto-fiction, “the semi-fictionalized presentation of the self in a narrative form of growth,” as Eisenberg sees it. The album served as a means toward working through emotional conflicts from adolescent trauma and PTSD, and dissects the dissolution and conflict that led towards the breakup of their former band. With much of it written while its events played out, Auto faces the grief of losing what one thinks is their future while experiencing a dramatic reshaping of their past; it delves openly into the limited nature of one person’s narrative. After making a few efforts to record Auto, Eisenberg ultimately chose to collaborate with childhood friend Nick Zanca, who contributes electronic elements and production. Mirroring the personal and organic offered by Eisenberg, synthetic sounds form a kind of boundary or context for everything. They “sound like commentary on songs that were written from an organic or subjective perspective,” says Eisenberg. Their place on the album is integral for Eisenberg’s goal “to outweigh the subjectivity of normal singer-songwriter guitar songs with the objectivity of electronic sound.”
File Under: Experimental
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Bobby Hutcherson: Oblique (Tone Poet) (Blue Note) LP
Oblique is one of only two quartet sessions the great vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson recorded for Blue Note (the classic Happenings being the other). Both albums featured the seminal pianist Herbie Hancock and drum master Joe Chambers, with the only variable in the line-up here being bassist Albert Stinson. Hutcherson’s breezy opener “‘Til Then,” Hancock’s tremendous “Theme From Blow Up,” and Chambers’ adventurous “Oblique” are standouts of a session that, taken as a whole, is an incredible journey from hard bop grooves to exploratory sonic tone poems. Recorded in 1967, the album wasn’t first released until 1979. Blue Note Records has announced the continuation of the acclaimed Tone Poet Audiophile Vinyl Reissue Series in 2020. Launched in 2019 in honor of the label’s 80th Anniversary, the Tone Poet series is produced by Joe Harley (from Music Matters) and features all-analog, 180g audiophile vinyl reissues that are mastered from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray of Cohearent Audio. Tone Poet vinyl is manufactured at RTI in Camarillo, CA, and packaged in deluxe Stoughton Printing “Old Style” gatefold Tip-On jackets. The titles were once again handpicked by Harley and cover the crème de la crème of the Blue Note catalog along with underrated classics, modern era standouts, and albums from other labels under the Blue Note umbrella including Pacific Jazz and United Artists Records. Every aspect of these Blue Note/Tone Poet releases is done to the highest-possible standard. It means that you will never find a superior version. “The LPs are mastered directly from the original analog master tapes by Kevin at his incredible facility called Cohearent Mastering. We go about it in the exact same way that we did for so many years for the Music Matters Blue Note reissues. We do not roll off the low end, boost the top or do any limiting of any kind. We allow the full glory of the original Blue Note masters to come though unimpeded! Short of having an actual time machine, this is as close as you can get to going back and being a fly on the wall for an original Blue Note recording session.” – Joe Harley
File Under: Jazz
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Kraftwerk: Computer World (Parlophone) LP
Finally in! On yellow vinyl! The multi-media project Kraftwerk was started in Düsseldorf, Germany 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. They set up their electronic Kling Klang Studio where they conceived and produced all Kraftwerk albums. Kraftwerk created the soundtrack for the digital age of the 21st century. AUTOBAHN 1974, RADIO-ACTIVITY 1975, TRANS EUROPE EXPRESS 1977, THE MAN-MACHINE 1978, COMPUTER WORLD 1981, TECHNO POP 1986, THE MIX 1991, TOUR DE FRANCE 2003. Their compositions, using innovative techniques, electronic sounds and synthetic voices combined with computerised rhythms, had a major musical influence on Electro, Hip Hop, Techno and Synth-Pop.
File Under: Electronic
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Lamps: People With Faces (In The Red) LP
“These days, good news is hard to come by, but here’s some: Lamps, LA’s notoriously unprolific noise-merchant trio, are ready to release their spectacular fourth album called People With Faces, out on In The Red Records. Produced by Ty Segall at Val’s, Lamps’ first recorded output since 2012’s landmark LP Under The Water, Under The Ground finds them breaking adventurous new terrain. I’d say they’ve matured, but I’d only say it behind their backs. Stalwarts Monty Buckles (guitar, voice, keyboards!!!) and Josh Erkman (drums, voice) double down on Lamps’ trademark cloak of effects-laden guitars and hammering drums, and new(ish) member Denée Segall jumps into the fray with her Poly Styrene-wail and monolithic bass, add-ing depth both sonically and lyrically. Their trademark abrasiveness is still present, but it’s bur-nished it into something richer, more layered. Don’t worry, it still kicks your head in…” —KD. Feb 2020
File Under: Punk
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Loscil: Coast/Range/Arc// (Kranky) LP
Named after the geographic formations of the seismically volatile Cascadian coastal mountains, loscil’s coast/range/arc// reissue features new artwork and an additional track. Remastered by James Plotkin and available on vinyl for the first time. “coast/range/arc// represents a solid and compelling expansion of loscil’s sound.” —Dusted “Vancouver-based sound sculptor Scott Morgan doesn’t make bad albums.” —Exclaim! “This is ambient music in the classic sense.” — Boomkat “It’s not hard to hear a parallel between the slow-motion developments within Morgan’s pieces and the shifts that occur imperceptibly in natural phenomena.” —Texture
File Under: Ambient, Electronic
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Motorhead: Ace of Spades 40th Anniversary (Sanctuary) 3LP
“Ace Of Spades” – the title track of Motörhead’s 1980 iconic, game changing album isn’t just one of the greatest hard rock songs ever written – it has truly become a lifestyle anthem for several generations of rockers, metalheads, punks, bikers, athletes, rebels, outcasts, and freethinkers all around the world. Few songs in modern history can instantly ignite the adrenaline of music fans the way the song’s opening dirty bass riff, and drum roll can. From zero to 100 mph in a matter of seconds. That speaker destroying opening riff is unstoppable. And the song altered the course of hard rock…forever. Upon its release in 1980, the Ace Of Spades album was nothing short of a game changer for all forms of hard rock. Like lightning in a bottle, it perfectly captured everything great about hard rock, heavy metal, and punk, amped it all up to eleven, and came racing out of the gates at what felt like a million miles an hour. Pushing at every musical boundary, nothing was harder, nothing was faster, and certainly nothing was louder. In honor of the album’s 40th anniversary Ace Of Spades has been half speed mastered from the original tapes for optimal speaker smashing dynamic range and is presented here on triple heavyweight 180g vinyl LP with an accompanying double live album of a newly unearthed, previously unreleased concert, recorded at Whitla Hall, Belfast on December 23, 1981. The package is completed with a 20-page book featuring the story of Ace Of Spades told through previously unpublished interviews with the people that were there, never before seen photos and rare memorabilia, and original song lyrics.
Features:
• 40th Anniversary 180g Vinyl 3LP reissue
• The Ace Of Spades album, half speed mastered and created from the original tapes
• Double live album of a newly unearthed, previously unreleased concert, recorded at Whitla Hall, Belfast on December 23, 1981
• 20-page book with the story of Ace Of Spades told through previously unpublished interviews with the people that were there
• Never before seen photos and rare memorabilia
• Original song lyrics
File Under: Metal, Rock
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Population II: A La O Terre (Castle Face) LP
“Introducing Population II—blazing through the stratosphere, boiling up from beneath the sea, hanging in the air like smoke…These elemental tunes drift and fluctuate, at one with the air, over extreme heat. Population II has beamed out of Quebec with a mind-melting debut [À La Ô Terre] of hard psych, freckled with punk sentiment. Both old school and timeless, these young humans rip. They are impressive in their live actions and this album captures this raw energy on wax. Produced by Manu from the great band Chocolat, a very high bar has been set, indeed. Fluid, tough, and over-saturated, this album is bound to please fans of the label and new-comers alike. Reminiscent of Amon Düül, early Pink Floyd, Kollektiv, Laurence Vanay, Les Olivensteins, early Kraftwerk, even a touch of the Kinks. “ —John Dwyer
File Under: Prog, Psych
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Nina Simone: Pastel Blues
(Acoustic Sounds Series) (Verve) LP
In 1964, Nina Simone embarked on new stage of her career. Her rejection by the Philadelphia-based Curtis Institute Of Music; time spent as a pianist in an Atlantic City nightclub; her jazz, gospel, pop and classical influences – all these had fused to make her one of the most complex, fascinating and talented artists of the decade. Simone released her debut album in 1958, but when she signed to Philips, in 1964, her creative output was about to dovetail with the Civil Rights movement – notably coinciding with the Civil Rights Act Of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, gender, religious affiliation or nationality. Simone’s fifth album for Philips has the distinction of containing one of President Obama’s favorite songs: Simone’s 10-minute version of “Sinnerman.” The song is also one of two from Pastel Blues to have been sampled by Kanye West (the other being Simone’s haunting rendition of the Billie Holiday classic, “Strange Fruit”). Elsewhere, opener “By My Husband” had a different kind of afterlife once Jeff Buckley recorded it for consideration for his 1993 EP Live At Sin-é (his version finally surfaced on the expanded 2003 edition of the release). 1965’s Pastel Blues was one of Simone’s best-performing records, entering the Top 10 on Billboard’s R&B charts. This all-analog 180g vinyl LP reissue was mastered from the original analog tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound, pressed at QRP, and comes housed in a Stoughton tip-on gatefold jacket.
File Under: Jazz
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Martin Solis & Los Primos: Introducing.. (Third Man) LP
Pick any genre—rap, rock, pop, folk, country, whatever you like. Can you think of an artist from that genre that was inducted into its hall of fame without any recordings released? And if one were to exist, what would that say about the artist’s impact, influence and importance? Is this scenario even possible? Born 1929 in San Antonio, TX, MARTIN HURON SOLIS, JR. and his family came to Michigan in 1942 as migrant farmworkers and soon settled in the Detroit area. The Solis family was part of a wave of migration during the 1940s that brought thousands of Texas-born Mexican-Americans, along with their culture, north. Though he played guitar from an early age, Solis eventually fell in love with conjunto music, a South Texas style defined by the combination of accordion and bajo sexto, a Mexican twelve-string bass guitar. He taught himself to play the bajo sexto and joined up with accordionist Manuel Rivera, playing for tips in bars around Southwest Detroit, the heart of Detroit’s Mexican-American community. In the late-1950s, he and his cousin WILLY HURON, a saxophonist, formed CONJUNTO LOS PRIMOS (“The Cousins”), at the time one of only a handful of conjuntos in the Midwest. Solis became a favorite in Detroit based on a vast repertoire of songs he compiled by following the latest hits coming up from Texas. Their musical style was more complex than the conjunto label suggests. The inclusion of Solis’s cousin Willy on saxophone blurs the line between working class conjunto music and the more middle class orquesta tejana, which includes more sophisticated string or horn sections. Likewise, they played a couple of polcas, the primary song form of the conjunto tradition, but also lean more toward styles like boleros and rancheras, song forms with roots in Cuba and Mexico. Solis’s vocal performance, too, showcases a fuller sound more in line with ranchera singers like Vicente Fernandez and Jorge Negrete than the thinner vocal tradition of conjunto style.
File Under: Latin America
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Spits: VI (Thriftstore) LP
Ripping through a portal from the basements of Kalamazoo, Michigan, the release of The Spits VI has arrived. This full length, self recorded album from Thriftstore Records ranges from the weird to the wild. Buzz saw guitars and catchy hooks are mixed with low budget horror effects to create a unique view of a dystopian world. With songs of terror, despair, hope and heartbreak, this one has something for the whole nuclear family!
File Under: Punk
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Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad: Azymuth (Jazz is Dead) LP
The fourth release from Jazz Is Dead records features Azymuth, one of the bands in Brazilian history, redefining popular Brazilian music. Having released almost 20 albums in their career, Azymuth proves to be a consistent source for an innovative mix of jazz, pop, MPB, and electronic music. Composed and produced by Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad and recorded in the Linear Labs analog studio.
File Under: Jazz, Brazil
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Various: Brown Acid – The Eleventh Trip (Riding Easy) LP
Riding Easy is now in the double digits of brilliant long-lost, rare, and unreleased hard rock, heavy psych, and proto-metal tracks from the ’60s-’70s and clearly this has become a bonafide archaeological movement as each new edition leads to more exciting new discoveries. Like the label has done throughout this series, all of these tracks were painstakingly licensed legitimately and the artists were paid. Here are just a few of the delights herein: This Trip opens with Adam Wind’s “Something Else,” featuring groovy crooning and a very acid-damaged guitar riff that meanders across key signatures like it ain’t no thing. This 1969 single by the Tacoma, WA band predates grunge by 20 years, but the band’s heavy psych and murky tones are just the stuff Northwest heroes Mudhoney sought so fervently at their peak. Lead singer Leroy Bell’s excessive vibrato gives the tune its charm, but the heavy breakdown in the middle is the real payoff. Later, Renaissance Fair take things in a very weird, very fun and undeniably heavy direction with an insanely distorted organ that sounds like a monstrous vacuum cleaner over dirge rhythms and growling vocals on their—let’s reiterate—weird 1968 track “In Wyrd.” Think if someone left a copy of The Doors’ Strange Parade out to warp in the sun on a blown-out toy record player, and then visiting space creatures attempted to imitate what they’d heard. Finally, Crazy Jerry sends this edition off on a high note with “Every Girl Gets One,” featuring crunching riffs, rollicking electric piano, stop ’n’ start rhythms and a curious telephone call sounding like a creepy answer to the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace.” Crazy Jerry is the alter-ego of guitarist Jerry Ciccone, who can also be heard on a few soul / funk and rock records from the ‘70s, including The Left Banke’s second album. But here, Jerry is…well, simply crazy. Get comfortable and prepare for yet another deep, deep dive into the treasure trove of dank, subterranean, wild-eyed and hairy rock ’n’ roll.
File Under: Psych, Rock, Metal
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…..Restocks….
Louis Armstrong & Oscar Peterson: s/t (Acoustic Sounds Series) (Verve) LP
Atramentus: Stygian (Coloured vinyl) (20 Buck Spin) LP
Bitchin’ Bajas: Bajas Fresh (Drag City) LP
Bitchin’ Bajas: s/t (Drag City) LP
Art Blakey: Buhaina’s Delight (Blue Note) LP
Boys Next Door: 2020RSD – Door, Door (Rhino) LP
Dave Brubeck: Time Out (Music on Vinyl) LP
Dead Moon: Unknown Passage (Mississippi) LP
Death Grips: No Love Deep Web (Harvest) LP
Faith No More: The Real Thing (Rhino) LP
The Fall: Hex Enduction Hour (Superior Viaduct) LP
The Fall: Perverted by Language (Superior Viaduct) LP
Mort Garson: Plantasia (Sacred Bones) LP
Alain Goraguer: La Planete Sauvage OST (Superior Viaduct) LP
Gorillaz: Sone Machine Season One (Parlophone) LP
Grouper: AIA: Alien Observer (Kranky) LP
Grouper: AIA: Dream Loss (Kranky) LP
Judas Priest: 2020RSD – British Steel (Legacy) LP
Khemmis: Hunted (Coloured vinyl) (20 Buck Spin) LP
Quin Kirchner: The Shadows & the Light (Astral Spirits) LP
Kraftwerk: Tour de France (Blue/Red Vinyl) (Parlophone) LP
Jackie McLean: It’s Time (Tone Poet) (Blue Note) LP
Metallica: …And Justice for All (Blackened) LP
Metallica: Ride the Lightning (Blackened) LP
Metallica: s/t (Blackened) LP
Molchat Doma: Monument (Sacred Bones) LP
Kevin Morby: Harlem River (Woodsist) LP
Lee Morgan: The Cooker (Tone Poet) (Blue Note) LP
Lee Morgan: The Rumproller (Blue Note) LP
Motorhead: On Parole (Parlophone) LP
Mr. Bungle: The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo (Ipecac) LP
Oh Sees: Carrion Crawler (In The Red) LP
Mustafa Ozkent: Genclik Ile Elele (Jackpot) LP
Richard Pinhas: Iceland (Superior Viaduct) LP
Primitive Man: Caustic (Relapse) LP
Radiohead: A Moon Shaped Pool (XL) LP
Radiohead: Amnesiac (XL) LP
Radiohead: OK Computer – OKNOTOK 1997-2017 (XL) LP
Radiohead: Pablo Honey (XL) LP
Radiohead: The Bends (XL) LP
Jonathan Richman: I, Jonathan (Craft) LP
Scientist: In The Kingdom of Dub (Superior Viaduct) LP
Sleep: Vol. One (Tupelo) LP
Sleep: Holy Mountain (Earache) LP
Jimmy Smith: Prayer Meetin’ (Tone Poet) (Blue Note) LP
Super Super Blues Band: Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters & Bo Diddley (Jackpot) LP
Sweeping Promises: Hunger for a Way Out (Feel It) LP
Allen Toussaint: Life, Love (4 Men With Beards) LP
Larry Young: Into Somethin’ (Blue Note) LP
Various: Lovin’ Mighty Fire: Nippon Funk, Soul, Disco 1973-83 (BGP) LP
Various: Funk Soul Sisters (BGP)